PDF Reducer - Jsoft.fr [Trialware]

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webfork
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PDF Reducer - Jsoft.fr [Trialware]

#1 Post by webfork »

Synopsis wrote:A PDF compression tool with a variety of extra features including edition, merge, cut according to size/pages, watermark, password, and digital signature. Allows batch operations (such as combining PDFs)
Usage notes:

There's a lot going on under the hood here - it looks like they were in progress with building a powerful, full-fledged product and then the project got cancelled. My main criticism of the program is that it runs fairly slow. Not sure it's been optimized for modern processors.

That said, the basic editor has a lot going on including pallates, borders, fill tool, transparency, color replacement, layer management (add, duplicate, flatten), and several filters. You can't change the object sizes, meaning you're stuck with a roughly 15 pixel width brush, which is probably fine for 90% of users. I'd probably use this program in tandem with LibreOffice Draw for edits as each probably does some things the other can't.

Oddly, it includes a way to convert PDFs into icons, which was a functionality I'm not sure I'd use but is nice to see.

Note that there doesn't appear to be a way to work with PDFs losslessly, meaning make changes without recompression. So I'd definitely aim for programs like PDF SAM or PDFTK for breaking up files into parts.

Steps: Install, copy to another folder, uninstall, and launch.

Status: Unclear. This is an edge case: since this program doesn't really have many settings to write in the first place, and seems to only just borrows settings from the last run, which probably isn't an issue for most users. Info is written to HKU\..\Software\Jsoft.fr ... Also writes to AppData Temp folders, which would still count as stealth.

Version tested: v1.4, SHA256: 9F5D04B4011783ECAC6717E031B10959C7B7B205423F250255A8203A27FA1541

Sites:
https://www.jsoft.fr/logiciel-pdf-reducteur/ (site is in French, program is in English)
https://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-to ... ucer.shtml

Testing:

I didn't get into this very far but there wasn't a dramatic difference between the compress for quality and "compress for screen" selections. A high quality, 2-page product spec PDF reduced from 1.7M to 595 and 580 respectively. The larger file looked to use a slightly sharper PDF export.

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Re: Jsoft.fr PDF Reducer

#2 Post by webfork »

PDF Reducer screenshots:

Page manager / preview
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Editor
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Results
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Re: Jsoft.fr PDF Reducer

#3 Post by webfork »

Update out, no changelog. Now listed as v2.2, which is a bit of a jump from 1.4 back when I tested in March. Then again, version numbers aren't used equally across projects so who knows? https://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-to ... ucer.shtml

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Re: Jsoft.fr PDF Reducer

#4 Post by webfork »

New update out and still not seeing a changelog, but clearly a few UI edits.

Once again, this very solid editor function is underneath a Wizard compression tool and you need to click "advanced" to see it. Still, a lot of functionality for a freeware PDF editor.

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Re: Jsoft.fr PDF Reducer

#5 Post by webfork »

Evidently there's a timer on this one. Didn't realize.
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